The Department of Music, which opened in 1997 to provide jazz education, was a place where talented young people of Turkey met the masters of jazz. Many masters of today’s music scene were educated in this school. Following a series of changes from 2005 onwards, a more inclusive curriculum was created, embracing all genres and areas. In its new form, the department became a place where the disciplines of composition and sound technologies merged, and where musicians who could approach music with this perspective without distinguishing genres were trained. Continuing to change by keeping up with what time brings, the department has the distinction of being a place where students and teachers who understand work discipline and the importance of free thought in the artistic creation process, and who share learning activities as multifaceted and multi-layered experiences, meet.

As the Department of Music, we see music as a way of living, thinking, and communicating, as opposed to a culture in which music -along with many other things- is treated purely as an object of consumption. We strive to discover what the past and today presents, to comprehend and produce through a critical filter. Above all, we prepare our students for professional life with an approach that encourages them to find their own identities, their own unique artistic languages as musicians.

Music Undergraduate Program has a curriculum that aims to graduate its students as individuals who are active, creative, open to interaction and collaboration, and who understand and develop the environment they live in. Students go through a very intensive period of entry level ear training, theory, music history, philosophy of music and composition classes during the first two years. In the third year, the required classes are less, and students are encouraged to take elective classes from all of the programs in the university and to design their own education. We remain constantly active at an international level by exchange programs, bilateral exchange agreements, seminars, workshops, and concerts with the participation of guests from abroad.

Graduates of Istanbul Bilgi University Music undergraduate program can build a career in many fields such as composition, sound design, performance, sound engineering, production, publishing, education, and interdisciplinary art; or become academicians.

* The Undergraduate Program in Music admits students with special aptitude test.